


A Reversal Of Sorts

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Grantaire is the last revolutionary backed against the wall in the Corinth’s upstairs room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Reversal Of Sorts

Grantaire was terrified.

He had awoken from his stupor in the backroom, stumbling towards the window, wanting to look outside. Was it over? Had he missed it all? And then he had heard the footsteps on the stairs.

He had never been a man prone to bouts of fear, not even in his youth when the nights had been dark and his father had yelled and the wind had whistled. But now? Now, Grantaire’s heart was beating as hard and fast in his chest as it ever did when he boxed ( _or when he looked at Enjolras),_ and he stumbled back against the wall as the guard in uniform came forwards, surrounded by his compatriots.

"This is the last one!" He proclaimed, and Grantaire whispered a soft "No.", because that couldn’t be true, they couldn’t be all  _dead_ , not his friends, not Bossuet and Joly and Combeferre and Courfeyrac and all the rest of them, they couldn’t be.

Not Enjolras.

And Grantaire had  _told_  them, damn it, told them before he’d drunk himself into his stupor that they would just die, and what would it be for? What would it be  _for_?

Grantaire felt dim fury in the back of his mind, in his very heart, for the idea that they’d all died, and he was here still alive. And then he stared down the barrel of the carabine pointed at him, and thought in a dry fashion that sounded all-too-painfully like Combeferre, that he wouldn’t be alive for long.

"No!" Grantaire thought he would collapse. He was on the very verge of tears already, and now he saw Enjolras at the back of the room, limping forwards ( _the gash in his leg_ ) and clutching at the side of his head, where gunpowder and blood had mingled to create a black smudge that marred his pretty hair.

"Enjolras." He whispered, and Enjolras said, "Grantaire."

The artist was frozen in place as Enjolras moved clumsily forwards, shouldering the guards out of his way to get to Grantaire, and when he got there he turned on his heel, back to his charge, and faced the guard head-on.

Enjolras was  _protecting_  him with his very body, and Grantaire felt real tears at his cheeks now, hot and wet, and he hadn’t cried since he’d been fifteen, but no, no, now he wept for the scarlet rose of the revolution. ”He is not a revolutionary. He is a  _civilian,_  merely trapped here. He believes not in this cause.”

Every word was a dagger in Grantaire’s very heart, and his tongue, Grantaire’s stupid, traitorous tongue, destroyed Enjolras’ attempt at playing saviour.

"He lies for he is sentimental and he is stupid. I am one of them: vive la revolution." Grantaire said the words loudly, and Enjolras fell, his injured leg giving way and forcing him to lean on the brunet. And Enjolras was  _looking_  at him, looking at him with those beautiful, beautiful cerulean eyes ( _how many times had he tried to paint them, to never do them justice?),_  and Grantaire fell head over heels for the angel of a man before him all over again.

Enjolras was smiling.

He had never smiled at Grantaire before, and now he did: the quirk of those soft, peach-coloured lips, so serene. “You will shoot us both.” said Grantaire, and he did not spare the national guard so much as a new glance, because he closed his eyes and put his forehead against Enjolras’, and clutched tightly at his red coat.

Grantaire was scared of dying.

He had never told Enjolras that.

"Please." He whispered, and the words came out choked and ugly, as ugly as Grantaire’s face, perhaps. "Will you permit it? Will you permit me to die with you?"

He didn’t hear Enjolras answer, because all that filled Grantaire’s ears then was  _gunfire_ , the gunfire of a firing squad, and underneath that, a very soft sound that could have been a sob. Grantaire never discovered if it truly was a sob: the first bullet hit his shoulder, wrenching at the flesh and it was heat, and pain, and it was _wet_  from blood, but the second pierced his temple and he knew nothing after that.

They hit the ground together, and the guard left them where they lay.

It was Javert who came to find them, and he stared down at the two young men, green and red at their breasts, blond and black at their heads. They lay still and cold on the hard wood of the Corinth’s floor like lovers entwined, and Javert, unaccustomed to such sights, felt a twist of melancholy in his chest as he stared at them.

Shaking his head and thinking of more important things than schoolboys who died embracing, he called for two guards to move them, and retreated the Corinth’s dark and unhappy aura. 


End file.
